From @vtgirl_healing blog:

April 16, 2021

Love is an innate capacity, wired into our brains before birth. We come into this world with a drive to feel it. Love, in this pure form, is simple and essential to our survival. 

As we grow and take in our surroundings, we begin the process of understanding HOW to love, what it looks like to us. Some people are blessed to have been raised in respectful, loving, nurturing, and supportive families. These individuals have role models (whom they can choose to emulate or not) that have given them the gift of a healthy concept of putting love into the world and into themselves. Such fortunate people have a gloriously paved sidewalk to guide them on their journey, making their life steps less treacherous, should they choose to use it.

Some less fortunate people walk a barely recognizable dirt path, keeping the best eye on that glorious sidewalk that they can. They understand the guide is there, and even if they lose sight of it, they have faith that they will come close to it again. Still others, those without hope and faith, decide that there is no path, paved or dirt, and they stop moving forward, forever resigned to a "knowing" that life will never feel what it means to love and be loved. For those of us in either of these two latter camps, we ask for your patience, support, and guidance. We likely come from households grave with destruction, chaos, abuse, neglect, or addiction, and are doing our best to keep heads above water.

In the beginning, we don't get to choose which model we are given for love. But we do get to choose the belief system we develop about loving. As we mature, we make choices (active and passive) about how we want, and will allow, love to show up in us, both for ourselves and our relationships.